Last week, we had nothing to talk about, but it ended up being our longest podcast ever.

This week, we had very little to talk about, so we kept things short, or at least relatively short. We answered some mail, caught up on "Justified," chatted about the state of "Saturday Night Live" and whatnot.

I was already in the tank for Sunday (March 10) night's episode of "The Amazing Race" before it began. Based on the monkey-heavy teaser and the title "I Love Monkeys!" there was precious little chance that I would have negative things to say about at least one portion of this Leg, which counts as a major plus in a season that has been initially lackluster.

Fortunately, not only did the Leg get off to a very strong start thanks to the promised-and-delivered monkeys, but it also closed well, with a concluding 20 minutes positively glutted with mind-boggling decisions and interpretations that left me yelling at the screen with frustration, confusion and amusement.

In the middle? Yes, there was yet another weak Detour that contributed heavily to the end-of-Leg drama, but didn't amount to much as challenges themselves. That wasn't so good. But even if I'd just been ambivalent on the rest of the episode, the end-of-hour Phil-ism would have pushed it into positive territory. In this case, it made a "good" episode "very good."

When you're on a red carpet, sometimes you only have a minute or two with an actor and you need to get to the root of what you're actually curious about.

For lots of reporters, that's spoilers and hints about upcoming episodes, which is totally fine and I know folks love to hear about that.

But if you give me two minutes with Robert Carlyle (and Begbie is presumably not on-topic), I'm gonna ask about process and in the case of his work on "Once Upon a Time," I want details on the construction of a character who is simultaneously four or five different characters, who each have different accents, intonations and mannerisms.

So if you're interested in what I'm interested in, this two-minute chat from PaleyFest in Los Angeles is mighty interesting.

So many people sign on for "Survivor" without any tangible strategy and inexplicably get carried through the majority of a season by either a fortuitous alliance or sheer physicality.

That's why it always makes me a tiny bit sad when I do a "Survivor" exit interview early in the season and I get the sense that the person I'm talking to had a smart and multi-layered approach to the game and just got pushed into an unfortunate corner, perhaps not even making it to a Merge.

Laura Alexander quickly admits that she was the weakest person on her "Survivor: Caramoan" tribe and for that, she was voted out. Might the game have progressed differently, though, if Shamar Thomas hadn't been medically evacuated from the game shortly before an Immunity Challenge? Without Shamar, the Fans lost a potentially strong player, but mostly Laura lost a number in her alliance as well as a potentially deflective shield for scrutiny.

In her exit interview, Laura takes much of the credit for the majority alliance that has steered the Fans' voting and explains her attempts to keep her deficiencies from being too glaring and what eventually did her in.

You can decide if you also come away feeling like under slightly different circumstances, Laura could have had a much longer "Survivor" run.

[As I mentioned in Shamar's exit interview, this week's cats were a little shorter than normal because there were two of them.]

Fairy tales are all about leading up to happily-ever-afters, but presumably when ABC's "Once Upon a Time" reaches its happily ever after, the show is over. Right? Things can't get too happy or else the drama is gone?

Not true, protests Ginnifer Goodwin, who I talked to on the PaleyFest red carpet in Los Angeles last weekend. The "Big Love" veteran, who plays Snow White on "Once Upon a Time," suggests that the characters deserve some downtime.

"I want to see them making tacos," Goodwin suggests.

Tacos may not be in the cards for the "Once Upon a Time" characters, but Goodwin suggests that we'll soon get to see more of my favorite incarnation of Snow White, the Woodland Warrior version of Snow. She also discusses her own accident-prone nature which led to a hospital vision last season.

In "Survivor" lore, you don't really want your name to end up next to Colton Cumbie, but that may be where Shamar Thomas' name is going to go.

Granted that fan opinions on Shamar have been far more varied than the near-universal malice directed at Colton, but both Shamar and Colton go in that very tiny "Survivor" chapter dedicated to contestants who dominated screentime in the early stages of a season only to be medically evacuated and leave the game without making a lasting impact.

For three weeks, the 27-year-old Iraq War veteran rubbed most of the other "Survivor: Caramoan" Fans tribe the wrong way with his aggressive personality but sometimes passive camp behavior. Each week it seemed like logic dictated that Shamar would be heading home, but he was part of an alliance that was determined to remain strong, even with him as an integral part.

Shamar, unhappy in the game from the opening moments, contemplated quitting earlier and then chose to depart during Wednesday's (March 6) episode at the doctor's recommendation after irritating his eye and being diagnosed with a divot in his cornea.

I tried to get Shamar to discuss his behavior in the game, as well as his image problem in one of this week's two "Survivor" exit interviews. You can read his answers however you choose. Click through for the full Q&A.

[Note that this week's two exit interviews -- the second will post tomorrow -- are a little shorter than normal. That's what comes from attempting to fit two bootees into a standard interview time. As a completist, I'm just grateful I got to chat with both of them.]

No. Seriously. I'm actually kinda curious. I want to know which girl is going to advance along with Amber, Kree, Candice and Angela.

I want to know who's going to advance among the Men, who were mostly a mediocre lot.

And, finally, I want to know if the judges are going to toss in any twists, two wild cards, perhaps? "Idol" is ending a week earlier this year, so I suppose that if you eliminate the Judges' Save and just do a Top 10, that fits, right?

Pre-credit sequence. The Fans have lost hope. Wait. Sorry. The Fans have lost Hope. "Where do you think we're going to go from here?" Eddie whines to Sherri. "It's mind-boggling that we got rid of Hope tonight because she was the prettiest one here and she was a threat to everybody because of that," says Eddie. Really, Eddie? Really? Ugh. Reynold tells Laura that she made him look like an idiot. Matt protests that this is part of the game, but Reynold says that he doesn't want to be associated with any of them and he has no respect for them. Eddie's all "Good luck winning after you vote me and Reynold off," to which somebody correctly notes that they haven't been winning with them either. I dislike Eddie a lot. And Reynold tells me Eddie could be next to go. I'm fine with that.

No matter what Randy Jackson, Nicki Minaj, Keith Urban and Mariah Carey try saying, the "American Idol" Top 10 Women weren't spectacular on Tuesday night. Four of them were very good, a couple of them were pretty bad and the rest of them were OK. That's a decent show and there's no reason to engage in hyperbole.

The Top 10 Men will have to step up their games on Wednesday (March 6) night if they're going to be worthy of their five slots in the overall Top 10, which will be unveiled on Thursday. Based on the Sudden Death performances, I don't think most of these guys are especially worthy, but let's find out.

I've seen at least a dozen "Community" panels over the years at various Fests and Cons and TCAs and you can guarantee two things:

1) The cast will be funny. It doesn't matter which permutation of talent takes that stage, they'll find a way to play off of each other. So even if Chevy Chase is there making everybody awkward or if you're missing Donald Glover, hilarity will still find a way to ensue.

2) In part because of No. 1, you're safely guaranteed that actionable information will be minimal. There's just too much improv and too many extended bits and too many games of one-upmanship. If you're a fan, that's not a problem. You go. You laugh. You have a great time. If you're a reporter looking to cull a blog post of 20 things one might have learned from a particular panel, it can be a real challenge. Either there's no straight-faced information, or straight-faced information is given, but the next punchline comes so quick at hand that you can't get follow-up details.

So this list of 20 Things We Learned From The "Community" PaleyFest Panel from Tuesday (March 5) night includes several things that probably aren't real and several very quick hints at things that went elsewhere. Previous 20 Things... write-ups from Comic-Con have been vast seas of quotations, but I'm not sure if this one will be.

Click through for the 20... But if you're spoiler averse, you probably don't want to bother.